Delonghi HVF3533B > Reviews (1)

My bedroom is located at the back of the house and overlooks the garden. Whilst the other rooms have the loft running above it my one doesn't. As such two of the walls do not have the 'insulation' effect of other rooms and so it can get extremely cold in there, to the point where I feel I have icicles hanging off from the end of my nose and have lost feeling in my fingers and toes! This is despite having the central heating turned on!

For this reason I have a small portable fan heater in the room to keep myself from freezing too much. However it decided to pack up smack bang in the middle of one of the coldest winters on record. Perfect timing I have to say! Knowing that I could not do without a heater I rushed off to my local Argos to buy a new one. The heater that I opted for was the DeLonghi HVF3533B, which cost £29.99 at the time of purchase.

The heater is a fairly small vertical one that doesn't take up much space in the room. It is white in colour and is relatively light, weighing in at 2.6 kg. The heater itself is rectangular in shape (portrait rather than landscape) and the actual fan is quite generously sized, taking up ¾ of the front. It has a heat output of 3kW and also has frost protection so that it will keep the room from becoming frosty.

At the front, on the top are two dials; one to control the thermostat (i.e. at what temperature the fan should come on at) and the other to choose how hot the air coming out should be. There are four such settings; one is a fan, which is handy as this can then be used to cool the room down in the summer and the other three vary in warmth with the 4th setting being the hottest and the 1st the coolest. It also has a fairly large red light on the front, which lights up when the fan is plugged in. It is worth noting that the fan has a fairly long cord at around 1.5m long, so doesn't have to be placed right next to the power socket.

The fan stands on a base that has a large button which if pressed allows the fan to oscillate. Although this was not something I was looking for when deciding which fan to purchase I find this is an incredibly useful feature, allowing the air to distribute around the room evenly rather than concentrating on one area. However on occasions where you may want to focus heat in one specific area it is possible to stop the fan from oscillating.

When in use I was pleased to notice how quiet it was. It's not exactly silent - you can hear it whirring away, but it is quiet enough for you not to notice. My previous heater did make a rather loud whirring noise, which wasn't too noticeable during the day but at night I found that it disrupted my sleep and often I had to climb out of bed to turn it off, even though it was still fairly cold in the room! In fact DeLonghi boast that this fan has the lowest noise level on the market - only 38 decibels at minimum power and 42 decibels at medium and higher power so that a warm and comfortable feeling can be reached at anytime in a quiet way.

The thermostat works well and the fan switches on automatically when the temperature in the room drops, keeping me nice and cosy at all times, and turns off when the room gets too hot.

It did take me a while to master the settings. Initially the fan would turn on when the room was cold but wouldn't switch off when the room had reached a comfortable temperature, so often the room would get uncomfortably hot. After experimenting a bit with this I think I have now mastered this and the fan switches off when the room reaches a comfortable temperature for me. I now also feel confident leaving this on at night whilst I sleep as it turns on and off automatically without making too much noise.

Overall I am very happy with this purchase and hope that this serves me well for a number of years to come. Highly recommended!